Marine Management Organisation

The complainant made a request to the Marine Management Organisation (“MMO”) for information about scrutiny by the European Commission (“EC”) of its data reporting systems, including copies of any relevant reports and responses to reports. The MMO applied regulation 12(4)(a) (information not held) and 12(4)(d) (unfinished documents) to documents it believed fell within the scope of the request. The Commissioner’s decision is that the MMO has breached regulation 14(3)(a) of the EIR by not issuing a refusal notice stating that it did not hold any information falling within the scope of the request and citing the exception contained in regulation 12(4)(a) to the entirety of the request. The Commissioner does not require the MMO to take any further steps to ensure compliance with the legislation.